The white ash, Fraxinus americana, is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN.WIKIMEDIA, RICHARD WEBBThe latest version of the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN) Red List reveals that while protection efforts appear to be slowing population declines of some threatened organisms, many others species, from antelopes to millipedes, are facing serious declines. Of the 87,967 species cited in the update yesterday (September 14), more than 25,000 are nearing extinction.
Populations of North America’s ash trees are in dramatic decline as a result of infections with invasive emerald ash borer beetles, with all but one the continent’s six species reclassified as critically endangered—one category away from extinction. “Ash trees are essential to plant communities of the United States and have been a popular horticultural species,” Murphy Westwood, a member of the IUCN Global Tree Specialist Group who led the assessment, says in a statement. “Their decline, which is likely to affect over 80 percent of the trees, will dramatically change the composition of both wild and urban forests.”
Meanwhile, the Christmas Island pipistrelle, a bat endemic to the Australian territory, has now been officially declared extinct. “It’s very difficult to decide when a species definitely ...
